1937 – Walt Disney

How TIME Covered the News: Long before its debut in December of 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was being hailed as the most ambitious animation project ever attempted, taking Walt Disney’s animation team more than three years to complete. But it would usher in a golden age for animation and, despite the towering debt taken on by Disney to finance the film, would ensure enormous wealth for the cartoon king.

“Skeptical Hollywood, that had wondered whether a fairy story could have enough suspense to hold an audience through seven reels, and whether, even if the plot held up, an audience would care about the fate of characters who were just drawings, was convinced that Walt Disney had done it again. Snow White is as exciting as a Western, as funny as a haywire comedy. It combines the classic idiom of folklore drama with rollicking comic-strip humor.”